The anti-competitive practices are around requiring that Google services need to be built into the OS with privileges unavailable to third party apps. They encourage apps to depend on APIs provided by Play services. The problem is it's not just a set of libraries for apps to use.
Conversation
right, that I'm aware of and hence why I called it the "smoking gun" somewhere in this thread. The ease and practicality of developing and installing an alternative OS for Google's product line is another issue, possibly considered anti-competitive if specific barriers exist. 1/
1
My opinion on that is well-known, but I'm wondering what you think about it and whether you would characterize these challenges as monopolistic and/or a hindrance to developers and users. 2/2
1
I don't think they should be forced to support installing other OSes on their own phones at all. Pixels have a tiny market share. Perhaps they shouldn't be allowed to provide Pixel exclusive advantages from their other services, such as free photo storage, but beyond that...
1
... it all has to do with Play services and the licensing arrangements for it. Don't really see much that's anti-competitive about Pixels themselves aside from minor cases where they offer advantages to using a Pixel based on their services like past free photo storage deals.
1
The reason I ask is that other monopoly cases have relied on looking at specific products as hardware+software combos. This was true re: Microsoft ruling and x86, and one of the reasons Gates was asked about alternative OS's and if there were barriers to installing them on x86 1/
2
It was also why "Linux" was mentioned as part of the claim that Microsoft was not a monopoly. I'm interested in the Google product line partially for this reason, but also some other potential legal arguments re: consumer protection I've been ruminating on. 2/2
1
Their monopoly is on push notifications, search, maps, and the other APIs they provide to apps. Apple has a similar monopoly on their own platform. Both are highly anti-competitive. They advantage their own apps and services in ways that aren't available to other apps.
1
Due to their monopolies on these APIs / services, phones without Play services aren't competitive, and their design prevents users from installing it on an Android compatible device. It has to be built into the OS with those special privileges unavailable to other apps.
1
Should be possible for a company like Amazon or Facebook to do a lawsuit about the push service alone. They should be able to offer a competing push service that's not disadvantaged (Android) or completely incapable of working (iOS) without wrapping the Apple / Google services.
2
They should also not be allowed to force developers to use their services to upload their apps to the Play Store. You can implement efficient push on Android without FCM, albeit with annoying UX (persistent notification for each implementation) but they forbid it on their store.
Also if a developer uses FCM, that should work on any Android compatible OS, not just ones building in Play services with special privileges. They should be forced to implement it as a library at most depending on a regular app. Can sell the app(s) if they really want to do that.
1